EVEN with tougher exams in English and maths pupils at Ridgeway School managed to improve on last year’s GCSE figures.

Principal James Povoas was very pleased with the result. “From an English point of view 84 per cent of students passed, 22 per cent of those were 7s to 9s.”

He said the school had the best figures in town last year for maths and the numbers had actually gone up by 3 per cent. A total of 79 per cent of pupils passed and of them 32 per cent achieved grades 7 to 9.

Friends Mair Thomas and Becky Gee, who achieved two 9s, four eights, 10 A* and four A’s between them, were relieved to have done so well.

“They are much harder, you have to remember more,” said Becky of the new exams.

“There is not a lot of practice material,” said Mair. But she praised the teachers for helping them through it. “They did a good job but they had to guess at most of the grades.”

Georgia Spry collected a full house of A* and A grades. “I wasn’t expecting that many As,” she said.

“It was definitely a lot more confusing. Obviously the teachers had no idea what to expect. We just had to revise lots.”

She already has her eyes on a place at university and is going into the school’s sixth form to study maths, chemistry, geography and physics.